Dead Space 3 Guide - Tips & tricks for survival

Dead Space 3 completely overhauls the weapon and suit upgrades from Dead Space 1 and 2 in favor of salvage and customizable weapons. Power Nodes are gone, replaced with Tungsten Torque Bars, Scrap Metal, and Somatic Gel. You don’t spend money anymore, you spend Transducers and Ration Seals. Yep, things have changed and we’re here to help! Here are GameZone’s five tips for success.

Know your salvage!

Dead Space 3 has five different raw materials you have to collect for the various usable items, weapon parts, and suit upgrades. Familiarizing yourself with all five is the first step towards knowing what to buy, sell, and scavenge in order to get what you need. They are as follows:

Tungsten - Tungsten is the key component for gun parts and upgrades as well as the main ingredient in crafting Tungsten Torque Bars, tools used to open special rooms packed with bonus items. It’s also necessary for upgrading Health, Armor, Stasis, and Kinesis Range, making it probably the most important salvage overall. Your Scavenger Bot is your friend when it comes to Tungsten, as it will usually return with some and provide Ration Seals that can be used to buy even more. Nooks and crannies in the environment tend to hide the stuff as well, so explore as much as possible.

Semiconductors - Semiconductors are required to build Weapon Parts, Blueprints, and Upgrade Circuits for improving your weapons. They’re also important for Armor, Stasis Duration, and Kinesis Damage. Thankfully, you’ll find a lot more of it compared to Tungsten, so you won’t really have to think about this salvage too much unless you’re upgrading your Armor, which can get pretty expensive.

Scrap Metal - As the name implies, Scrap Metal is the most common salvage you’ll come across. While it’s needed for pretty much every suit upgrade and weapon part in the game, as well as Ammo, you’ll still be drowning in the stuff since the need for Tungsten will probably limit your ability to spend Scrap Metal. Ammo is plentiful as well, so you'll most likely sell it for even more Scrap Metal.

Somatic Gel - The best way to think about Somatic Gel is to consider it the “health stuff.” Health upgrades for your suit use Somatic Gel, as well as Small, Medium, and Large Health Packs. That’s about it, so if you’re focused on building a cool weapon, selling off your Health Packs isn’t going to help you.

Transducers - Transducers are the Stasis/Kinesis equivalent to Somatic Gel. All Stasis upgrades require it, and Kinesis Damage needs it too. You can also use Transducers to buy Stasis Packs, but you’ll most likely want to do the exact opposite, selling off extra Stasis Packs in order to get suit upgrades.

Send out your Scavenger Bot, use Ration Seals

About a quarter of the way through Dead Space 3 you’ll acquire your first Scavenger Bot. Eventually you’ll get your hands on three of the little guys, and you’ll want them, because they’re the key to getting the most salvage. Once you have one, simply equip it and aim to bring up your radar. The radar indicates the best spots to drop the bots for maximum resources. The outer arrows indicate that the location is above or below you, while the center tells you which direction to run towards. Once you find a hot spot, drop the Scavenger Bot and go back to playing.

After ten minutes, the bot will return to the Bench. Once you return, you’ll gain all the salvage and a handful of Ration Seals. Ration Seals are Dead Space 3’s in-universe currency for buying Resource Packs. These are some of DS3’s dreaded DLC packs that can be purchased with real money. DON’T DO THAT. Trust me, there’s really no need to buy Resource Packs when you can get them for free with a small amount of effort. Even without spending real money, Resource Packs throw the game in your favor quite a lot, even on Impossible difficulty.

Resource Packs come in three varieties: Resource Packs, Ultra Weapon and Resource Packs, and Epic Weapon and Resource Packs. At first you may want to save up for the bigger packs and get the rare weapon parts that come along with them, however, if you’re simply looking for salvage, the regular Resource Pack is definitely the better value.

Joe Donato
Video games became an amazing, artful, interactive story-driven medium for me right around when I played Panzer Dragoon Saga on Sega Saturn. Ever since then, I've wanted to be a part of this industry. Somewhere along the line I, possibly foolishly, decided I'd rather write about them than actually make them. So here I am.